Outriggers' Way-out Race

A few hundred yards west of the ancient white lighthouse on the point of Diamond Head, a light that once warned whalers of the treacherous rocks and coral that lie just offshore and now beckons millions of tourists, the long, sleek koa wood racing canoe slipped inside the reef. For the next two miles the six bronzed crewmen sliced across the esplanade of Waikiki, 14 strokes on the left, 14 strokes on the right. Surfers wiped out their runs, visitors swam hastily to safety, and in the big tourist outriggers waiting for waves on the reef line beach boys stood up and cheered while their mainland passengers stared in certain bewilderment.

At the western end of Waikiki the racers rounded the stubby Hilton Pier and drove straight up onto the sands of Duke Kahanamoku Beach. The Waikiki Surf Club had once again won the annual Molokai-to- Oahu outrigger race, its 11th victory in the 21 tries since 1952 when the event was established. In doing so Surf had paddled 41 miles across the infamous Molokai Channel in six hours one minute and 46 seconds. The race ended in the mock pomposity of the Aloha King's Court, a festival finish that entertains the thousands who come to Hawaii for Aloha Week but one that has always deprived it of recognition as one of the world's most grueling aquatic events. "That's quite a stunt," said a milk-skinned coast haole (mainland Caucasian), one of some 5,000 who jammed the hot sands around the final mark. An estimated 20,000 more watched Surfs sprint to the finish from hotel beaches the length of Waikiki.

It is no stunt. It is, in fact, hard to imagine any team event in any sport that demands longer and more arduous preparation and presents a cruder challenge as its climax. Certainly no Olympic category can match its relentless pressure—or its pure amateurism. Olympic gold medalists endorse products, get perquisites and even appear as comedians (comedians?) on the Bob Hope show. The winner of Molokai- Oahu gets $500 for the club treasury. The nine athletes who make up a boat's crew (three relief paddlers are permitted) get nothing but a bundle of flower leis and, presumably, a certain amount of tender, loving post-race care.

Although Waikiki Surfs victory time was about 16 minutes short of the modern record for the crossing (5:45:16, set by the Outrigger Club in 1968), it was won under unspeakable weather conditions—unspeakable for canoeing, that is. The trade winds had been missing for almost a fortnight in one of Hawaii's most prolonged and agonizing hot spells. The temperature was 88� on race day, two degrees off the record high for Oct. 15, and the Molokai Channel made its own peculiar contribution to the rigors of the day—it went flat. Instead of the usual four-to six-foot sea, there were one-foot swells. Instead of cooling 15- to 25-mph winds, there was a vagrant breeze that seldom got above six to eight mph. The day before, Surf Paddler Andy Miller, sweating in the sun at Hale O Lono Harbor, a windless cliff-enclosed seashell of a place on Molokai where the race begins, had said: "For us, the rougher the better. It is harder to paddle, but you are wet all the time and it keeps you cool. If it is like today it will be like paddling in an oven."

It was even more like today than today was. At seven a.m. the paddlers, coaches and escort personnel of the competing clubs gathered around the launch point to hear the Rev. Mitchell Pauole bless the race and ask for heavenly support for the contestants ( Hawaii blesses everything—until they are blessed, brand-new blacktop highways are posted: "This road not yet dedicated—proceed at your own risk"). As the crews carried their canoes into the water, Chris Faria, president of the Hawaiian Canoe Racing Association, said: "These guys are gonna have to paddle all the way. Nobody gonna help 'em—nobody down here, nobody up there." In a rough sea an outrigger canoe often can surf down big waves, thus attaining bursts of speed and resting the crew.

Of the 16 crews that lined up for the start off Hale O Lono, 11 were from Oahu. There was one each from Molokai, Hawaii and Kauai, and there was a lone California entry—Marina del Rey, one of seven outrigger racing clubs in California. The 16th crew was the least probable—a bunch of marines from the Kaneohe Marine Base on Oahu who had banded together less than three months earlier.

All told, there were six koa canoes—beautiful, burnished vessels carved out of single logs cut from Hawaii's largest native trees—and 10 made of fiber glass. Each canoe had a mother boat carrying coaches and the reserve paddlers, and some had small, fast Boston whalers to effect crew transfers. Each crew had a "secret" strategy and one—the famed Outrigger Club of Honolulu—even had a secret training diet. The Outrigger Club, with a smaller koa canoe than most, was something of a dark horse. "We need rough weather," said Outrigger's most spectacular athlete, Fred Hemmings Jr., a former world surfing champion. "With good waves we can win."

Except for Outrigger, the marines and Marina del Rey, which were predominantly haole, the crews represented the usual Hawaiian mixture of race—haole, Hawaiian, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese and so on. The economic mix was equally diverse—some boats had corporation executives paddling behind laborers and white-collar clerks spelling University of Hawaii students.

As marathon watchers know, all but the very best runners begin slowly, pacing and saving themselves. Not outrigger canoe racers. When the crews jumped off at 7:24 a.m. they were flat out in seconds, driving the canoes forward at 45 to 54 strokes a minute. It soon became apparent that Outrigger's race strategy was, indeed, something else. Cursed by the flat sea, Outrigger moved well south of the rhumb line from Hale O Lono to Waikiki, looking for the waves that all Hawaiian channels normally stir up just beyond their southern exits.

The first crew change came at eight a.m., and for onlookers who had never seen the race before, it was heart-stopping. The Outrigger Club whaler shot ahead of its canoe, cut sharply across its course and dumped two relief paddlers in Molokai's shark-filled waters on the rigger (port) side. As the canoe came up to them, they ducked under the rig and two of the starters bailed out to starboard as the relief men scrambled into their vacated positions. All of this was done and the full stroke resumed in less than 15 seconds. The whaler picked up the evacuees and quickly lifted them to the tender, to await their next turn.